topic/beauty

What these qualities meant, how they conjoined to form a human being who looked and moved a certain way, I had no idea. As a teenager, I first became aware of people’s eyes catching on me as I walked down Michigan Avenue with my mother and Grace during shopping trips to Chicago. They glanced, then looked—each time, I felt a prick of sensation within me. I knew how transistors worked; my father had shown me a picture of the very first one, at Bell Labs, a crusty, inauspicious-looking rock that had performed the revolutionary feat of transmitting and amplifying electrical current. The jabs of interest I provoked in strangers struck me as an unharnessed energy source; somehow, I would convert them into power.

“A picture. Maybe the drugstore.” The studied way she avoided his eyes told him boys would be present. Natalie was boy-crazy, and Tabby had grown prettier than Dexter would have liked. Not that he wished ugliness on his only daughter, but showy beauty was an invitation to dependence. He’d have liked her to have the hidden kind, visible only to those who looked closely. She’d made a lapel pin out of an aspirin box painted over with red nail varnish, and called it a Wish Box. Apparently, there was a secret wish inside, written on a slip of paper. The idea of Tabby maintaining a secret vexed him a little.

The three others: I mentioned one so sleazy. Maybe in the end he wasn’t as bad as the other two. I say that because he was uglier, and an ugly man may learn to compensate for his face with some kindness. Perhaps his entire career was compensation for his ugliness—a path to money that could pay women to ignore the way he looked. Pale pink, fat, he reminded me of a hairless mole we’d seen at the zoo. There is no point in asking what the attraction was—that’s the wrong question. Clearly what has gone on in the world of my past can answer only other questions. Like why does a man want to pretend a woman likes him? What does anyone get from pretending? I did the ugly one first. Went to a bar in his neighborhood, drank some whiskey with him.

His car was sleek and white and had doors that opened upward, like wings on a flying horse. We got inside it. He opened the bag (which was silk) and scooped the cocaine out of it with his car key. He placed the key under one winged nostril and briskly inhaled. I thought of the time my father was insulted by a car salesman who said, “All you want is something to get around in!” For a week after, my father walked around saying, “What do you do with it, you son of a bitch? Screw with it?” We passed the key back and forth for some moments. Finally, he licked it and put it in the ignition. He said, “Alison, you are a beautiful girl. And now you are in a country that understands beauty. Enjoy it.” He started the car. The drug hit my heart. Its hard pounding spread through my body in long dark ripples and for a second I was afraid. Then I stepped inside the electrical current and let it knock me out. We pulled out of the lot and into the Parisian traffic.

By the time I contacted Marion for an interview in 2003, I’d been a widow for long enough that I no longer feared meeting this first wife, though I cannot say I was looking forward to it. I will admit I was intimidated by Marion’s effortless grace—who wouldn’t be? She is a good deal younger than I am, not so much in years but in the way she carries them, and not only in the way she carries them physically but also in her bright and undiminished gaze, that of someone who seems to know no disappointment. You could argue, of course, that physical beauty indicates nothing of any depth about a person, yet few can avoid falling under its spell.

'To expect you to love a man with this.' He turned his bad cheek towards me. 'You believe in God,' he said. 'That's easy. You are beautiful. You have no complaint, but why should I love a God who gave a child this?'

'Dear Richard,' I said, 'there's nothing so very bad...' I shut my eyes and put my mouth against the cheek. I felt sick for a moment because I fear deformity, and he sat quiet and let me kiss him, and I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How good You are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain.

I felt him move abruptly away and I opened my eyes. He said, 'Good-bye.'

'Good-bye, Richard.'

'Don't come back,' he said, 'I can't bear your pity.'

'It's not pity.'

'I've made a fool of myself.'

I went away. It wasn't any good staying. I couldn't tell him I envied him, carrying the mark of pain around with him like that, seeing You in the glass every day instead of this dull human thing we call beauty.